Ireland Redux, Part III: Guinness Storehouse

Once I had gotten over the embarrassment of driving with the emergency brake on in the car rental parking lot, my sister and I set out.  According to directions I had printed from the Hilton website (my sister's kind husband offered his Hilton points for two nights gratis in Dublin), our drive should have taken no more than thirty minutes from the airport to the hotel.  

Traffic lights eased me through my first roundabout, and then we were on the M50 motorway.  But sis started in pretty early with concerns that I was listing too far to the left.  Every time I tried to use the turn signal, I set off the windshield wipers instead.  There were signs indicating a toll road, but no place to pay.  And for some reason, it took a lot of adjustment for me to get comfortable with speed limit signs in kilometers per hour, even though the speedometer was in kilometers as well.  Maybe I was just tired. 

But, we reached Dublin fairly early, so I knew that a bed and shower was only minutes away.  Except, we made a wrong turn somewhere, a very, very wrong turn.  As a result, what I most wanted to avoid occurred: I spent hours driving in the city.  Our hotel was supposed to be on the outskirts of Dublin, so this wasn't supposed to happen.  But one wrong turn became another and soon my sister and I were shouting at each other.  I turned into the wrong (right) lane twice, I got honked at more than I ever have, and it wasn't until a desperate call to the hotel three hours into the nightmare that we cooled it enough to focus on the directions given by the very nice desk person who probably couldn't understand how we'd gotten so lost.  We got to the hotel, checked in with barely leashed patience, and...took a shower and went to dinner.  It couldn't be helped; we were as hungry as we were tired.  And since we'd been up 32 hours, we knew once we went to sleep, we wouldn't wake until morning.

And wake we did, at a nice mid-morning hour the following day.  We promised each other that we would walk or take public transport in Dublin.  We were not driving until we left the city.  So, I got specific directions to the Guinness Storehouse, which was a 20 minute walk through alleys and neighborhoods.  This time, we only took one wrong turn, and then we were there.

For 15 euro, you can visit the museum, which documents the brewing process through multimedia, such as film, artifacts, and music, and receive a complimentary pint on the sixth floor in the Gravity Bar which provides a 360 degree view of Dublin.  

During the self-guided tour, there was also a half-pint sample, and an opportunity to build your own Guinness (which I was too chicken to do).  We ate lunch there, as there was a restaurant and cafe.  I had a very nice Guinness-enriched beef stew.

And my favorite picture from Guinness, because it says "Archive":

My sister spent a few euro at the gift shop and we left the Storehouse very pleased with our experience.  So far, it had been a much better day.